"It is personal responsibility that makes a safe diver or a safe driver. If you personally can't acknowledge your own limitations, then maybe you shouldn't be doing that activity. "

Personal limitations as a beginner to an activity that requires education is more often then not directly correlated to the advice and information provided by the educator. If a "professional" trains you and gives you the "crawl before you can walk" speech and supplements that speech with "positive reinforcement" followed by a plug for "continuing education" then it isn't unreasonable to consider that perhaps such diver isn't equipped or fully informed as to the multiplicity of risks that may arise.

In order for anyone to defend the position advocated by some of the agencies, one only needs to answer the following:

1) At the end of a OW class do you believe that a diver is "qualified" to be "certified" for the rest of that persons life in this sport? ;

2) When a diver is awarded an "advanced" diver rating, is that diver truly an "adanced" diver? ;

3) When a diver is awarded a "wreck diver" rating, is that person truly "qualified" to dives wrecks? ;

4) When a diver is awarded a "deep diver" rating, is that person truly "qualified" to dive deep? ;

5) When a diver is awarded a "night diver" rating, is that person truly "qualified" to dive at night? ;

If you believe they are, then you fall into the category of advocating the status quo and defending the existing paradigm. If you feel otherwise, then you fall into the category of those that are seeking change.

Naturally I could go on endlessly about the awarding of a rating that is incompatible with the requisite training. When you breakdown these classes, most do very little in terms of training for the rating that they purport to represent. Many of the leading agencies need to repurpose their efforts and redirect their focus towards raising the bar so people can aspire to reach it, not lowering it such to a point that people can crawl over it.

In a self-policing environment we need to be more dilligent, not less dilligent, or else it is only a matter of time before lawsuits such as the nature spawning this thread gain in popularity, or worse yet, government decides that they need to start poking their idiotic heads into the mix.